...UMass
Memphis
New Jersey Nets
Hard to say that UMass was worse off. What Calipari left behind was unfulfillable expectations and an unsustainable infrastructure.
I made good money off the success of the UMass basketball program while coach Cal was there. I outfitted the town's largest sportsbar, which never would have become a sportsbar if not to cash in on the interest in basketball that the revived program had generated. Fortunately for me, I moved out of town two years before it all crashed.
Calipari was instrumental in getting the new "Mullins Center" finally built, replacing the 4,000 seat "Cage" that had been the arena for this Division I school of about 26,000 undergrads. I have since read that Mullins has lost money since Calipari moved out of town.
The basketball program dropped to .500 level with his assistant coach, Bruiser Flint at the helm. Unfortunately for Bruiser, he only recruited kids who could read and write. No Loe Roes or Donta Brights.
He did leave some other carcasses along the way. Calipari had an on-air confrontation with the local radio sportscaster over a topic he refused to discuss during the Nike/Coach Cal show and demanded that he immediately cut to a commercial. That broadcaster's contract with the flagship station was not renewed after that, and the station gave him no reason for the non-renewal.
He also moved the coach's weekly show to a non sports bar the year after I departed. A little bird, who was sworn to secrecy, told me that it was because there was a dispute over a few thousand dollars worth of food bills rung up by people he had sent to that restaurant over the course of the season to have lunch "on him".
I'm puzzled by the criticisms I see of Calipari's coaching. During the two years that I ran the equipment for his coach's show, I watched the games closely, and he was the best game coach I have ever seen. When the program was in its ascendency, first beating a top 25 team, then a top ten team, then a number one, Calipari's game coaching made the difference between winning and losing in all of those big games.
But of course, back in those days, he could tell a Harper Williams or a Tony Barbee what to do and they'd do it. It could be that it is a lot harder to coach the one-and-done players that most teams have to rely on today.